Is open office reliable? Or safe?

I am a little confused as to why my new powerbook will not have a word processor built in. I am not going to get microsoft word because I am sick of microsoft and that is why I bought an apple! I wonder if it's a good idea to use open office for my valuable writing? When apple updates apple works I will probably get that.

I can say that OpenOffice on FreeBSD is great. It's actually a opensource version of StarOffice 6.0 which is a Sun product. I'd highly recommend OpenOffice, although I don't have my PB yet, when I get it, I will be looking forward to installing OpenOffice. Keep in mind I haven't used it on mac os x so it might not be as stable quite yet however I do know they at least have a version out there...Why pay when you can go opensource?

OOo has a Printer Setup utility (check same folder that OOo was installed in). Actually I didn't have to do anything with it, since it showed my printer right away and printing from the application worked perfectly. This may have to do with the fact that I installed Gimp-Print and Ghostscript first. Try installing those and checking with OOo's setup utility. Can't remember the exact address for GP right now, but if you google it you'll find it in a second.

And yes, it's true OOo is still a bit rough around the edges, especially in font handling, but IMHO that doesn't detract from OOo and Gimp-Print being totally killer apps (for $0, I mean). True, if you're used to Word you have to change your point of view a bit, but I've yet to see a real reason why one should go back to M$W.

I agree with JeffGCD. For basic writing functions nothing beats text edit. Actually I put it in the dock and I haven't used Apple Works since I got OS X. Sure it doesn't have a lot of features but it is quick and easy and bug free.

It has been a long time since the last time I fired up AppleWorks. TextEdit covers everything that I need. Besides, I tend to send docs as PDFs anyway (I don't want to force anyone to have to buy software to read what I'm sending them), and they have always looked great straight out of TextEdit (images and everything).